Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
To reduce launch costs, many launch vehicles used to carry a payload into outer space have been designed to simultaneously carry a plurality of spacecraft such as, for example, satellites. In one approach, the launch vehicle includes a dedicated dispenser system, which separately supports each spacecraft during lift-off and then individually dispenses each spacecraft in orbit. One drawback is that the dispenser system tends to be relatively bulky and heavy, which reduces the useable payload that can be carried into orbit by the launch vehicle.